I know that the giants/elves have been at war, but is there an exact date (real time) that the feud was announced? I highkey need to know this or I will not be able to stop thinking of it. welp.

From what I remember, the fued started during the early days. So if you're fine with spoilers well

Giant/Elf spoilers

Initially, Neamhain, known as The Great Irinid created Iria. She used the Heart of Courcle to create Iria and with it, made the land and the Elves and Giants. Eventually, the Dragons plotted to take over Iria.

Neamhain gave them the Falcon and Savage Beast transformations and they fought back against the Dragons, which became the Irinid War. After the war was over and the dragons were sealed I guess, the Elves and Giants wanted the power of the Heart of Courcle for themselves. They suffered from greed and wanted to control it themselves.

Seeing this, Neamhain was sad that it had come to this, and thus put a curse on Iria: The ancient relics were destroyed, The elves land Connus became a desert, and the giants land Physis became an artic area. The elves also suffered from the heat of the desert and were doomed to become a Desert Ghost while the giants would freeze and starve in the snowy artic area.

This all happened looooong before Mabinogi takes place

You fools would dare to challenge the king of light and darkness? So you choose to do and so you shall feel my wrath!

Ooo but I am looking for the actual date that the war was announced. I was told it was sometime in 2008. I want this information so I can calculate how many in-game years the war has been ravaging.

You aren't going to find that. See, if by 2008 you mean when the Elves and giants were introduced. They came into the game according to the wiki on 2009. Because the Humans discovered the continent of Iria, where they're from. But the Elves and giants have existed looong before we found them. So in that sense, what I'm saying is no one knows when the war actually started. It was still going on when we discovered them, so there isn't an actual date.

You fools would dare to challenge the king of light and darkness? So you choose to do and so you shall feel my wrath!

Krug flirted with Castanea this one time, Kirine got mad. Then shit happened.
I think it's more believable than the official story.

Castanea and Kirine were popular girls in highschool, but a gang of delincuents called the dragons started to harass them, on that moment Neamhain senpai as her Idol persona Irinid gave them make up sets like the one she uses, both Castanea and Kirine used them to accentuate their beauty and captivate enough people to dwarf the amount of members that the gang had, forcing them to disband.

Both Castanea and Kirine decided to use their group to hunt down every make up shop on the town aiming to take the place of Irinid, Neamhain feed up with their actitude decided to use her natural charm to severely dimish both Castanea and Kirine's fans and ordered her manager to make sure that they had a hard time to get make up that would make them look as petty as Irinid, then used her influence to send Castanea to Shikoku/Kyushu and Kirine to Hokkaido, after that...

Online (on Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc.)

Last edited by OniZero; 05-12-2017 at 03:16 PM.
Reason: Sending Castanea to a place too unpopulated would make the story implode

Back in the day there were virtual magazines called "Erinn Walker"s that released before/during every major update. There was one released right as Iria came out in the US. The US version of the update encompassed G4-7 all in one update so it added both Elves and Giants, and that magazine already had Elf Vs Giant sentiment. So that's the earliest I remember it being a thing in the US. Of course the whole thing happened long before that in KR, idk when it started there. In Korea, Elves came out in G5. Giants did not exist until G6. (Also fun fact, you used to not be able to make female giants, which is why Kirine looks so different from player female giants even before the G12 giant renewal.)

Since everyone else gave you an answer according to lore within game, my answer would be in "real" date.
It's whenever G6 Giants of Snowfield went live in server nearest to you. In NA that should be February 26th, 2009.

In JP server, it went live on 2007 April 26th. According to a lore I came across, elf players and human elf supporter players actually tried to raid Vales and they were completely 100% decimated by giant guards on day one of the update.